Guinea-Bissau

Moral authority

THE armed forces are split into two factions, and fighting one another. Barely recovered from one civil war, this small West African state was showing at midweek some alarming signs of being consumed by another. General Ansumane Mane, the former leader of a short-lived military junta, and Kumba Yalla, the current, democratically elected, president, are battling for authority. Yet, until now, Guinea-Bissau had been making a brave bid, in a particularly troubled region of Africa, for political pluralism.

A year-long civil war, between General Mane's forces and the country's long-time, authoritarian ruler, Joao Bernardo Viera, ended last year. In February, the party that had run Guinea-Bissau ever since its independence from Portugal in 1974 lost control at UN-supervised elections. Since then, the country has been run by a coalition of two opposition parties, which were brought into power by default as the only alternative to long-entrenched autocracy. A democratic re-birth, it seemed.

But General Mane is making it all too plain that he is not prepared to give up control. On November 21st he declared himself head of the army. He pronounced 30 military promotions, made by the president last week, to be null and void. The general's rationale is that the appointments were politically and tribally motivated—which indeed they were—and would therefore upset the balance of power in the armed forces.

The cabinet went into crisis session. Two days later, forces loyal to the president had control of most of the capital, Bissau, while General Mane was holding the airbase. Public opinion is probably as split as the army. General Mane's men retain some popularity for removing Mr Vieira from power, running a relatively clean transitional administration and peacefully handing over power. This, the general felt, gave him the moral authority to pronounce on government measures.

The UN Security Council has warned General Mane that it will hold him to blame if the country slides into chaos. Direct military intervention, he has been told, could lead to international isolation, and an end to the foreign assistance that is crucial for the country's reconstruction. The army is determined to preserve its autonomy and the situation looks grim, for the moment. But if the past is any guide to the future, the pattern of other run-ins between the army and the government over the past year suggests that the conflict could end in a face-saving climb-down on both sides.